zondag 12 juni 2016

In loving memory: a letter to Betsy Blankett Milicevic

Dear Betsy,

We share the same birthday, October 8th. You passed away one
day after my purple guide Prince would have turned 58. I don’t think further
comparisons of numbers and ages will help me. Diving into them is just an intuitive impulse to make sense of the incomprehensible.
Scarier because more confronting, but also more effective is writing: figuring
out what is hidden behind the symbols of the written word, catching the flowing
streams of grief and hope and temporarily attaching some dialogical truth to them. Publishing
an English letter on my blog (that’s a first, lady!) seems to be the only proper
way to say goodbye to a glorious human being who showed me what inner strength is
about.

I’m European, you’re American. We met in a Chinese hospital
four years ago, less than a year before my father died from ALS, the same
disease that defeated your body, but never your soul. Memories of this Chinese hospital, where the family members of patients from all over the
world gathered in the same kitchen, feel like memories of some kind of
alternative reality where we tried to fight the inevitable. There are many ways
of fighting: my father chose to ignore his fate for a long time, didn’t want to
discuss it and was surely not facing it when he met you. That attitude left space to
watch movies, talk about books and international politics. I cannot imagine how
many topics you discussed during the weekly dinners in that one very nice
Chinese restaurant in the city center, but there must have been plenty. Whereas
my father chose not to talk about his illness and approaching death, you were
at the same time accepting and fighting it. I know no other human who balanced
on this thin line so gracefully as you did. Your body might have failed you, your
mind was the master.

After I heard of your passing, I went to your Facebookpage.
I strolled through the inspirational and empowering quotes you posted and smiled.
Most of our private conversations were about pushing yourself to evolve. When I
told you about the condition my father was in a few months before he died, you
didn’t react to the dramatic facts I told you. You just replied: ‘We have to
get him to fight and to be more positive.’ However short these conversations
were, we felt the ‘we’ and preferred that pronoun. When we met in China, I got
off the plane in a total bliss. I had fallen madly in love one week
earlier, still cherishing very romantic ideas about love, totally convinced he
would be the one that would help to take the unmeasurable pain away and that I
would be able to empower him in pursuing his goals in life. When I told you which
serious issues caused the two of us to break up only four months later, you seemed
even more disappointed than I was. A few months later down the road you asked
me if the ex ‘had seen the light’. I said he hadn’t and that I didn’t expect
him to do so soon. ‘He’s a dumb shit’, you replied. I immediately acted from a
loving reflex and spoke in his defence. But a few sentences later you made
clear what you actually meant to say. Behind the cursing was your core message:
‘Everyone can change. Let’s hope he can cure himself.’

And that’s exactly what your death is once more making me
realize. The past can help us understand but it’s never an excuse. Whatever
hardships you’re facing and however gloomy your future might seem, you showed –
rather than told me - how to fully live the now. Like a meditating monk
surviving without food in a cave, you continued to emit messages of love and
courage from a wheelchair, breathing though a tube piercing your skin. This
message has only become stronger now you have died.

Still I have to admit that I am also mourning a sparkle of
hope that died with you on June 8th. Of all the ALS-patients that I personally
know, in my mind you were the one with the best chance to survive for a mighty
long time. Because just like Stephen Hawking, you were talking to the universe,
to time and space, to all that encompasses us and our mortality. You were in a
constant dialogue with the possibilities of your own mind and imagination and
seemed to get endless power and a will to live from that. You were open to all
kinds of alternative therapies. I’m pretty sure that you lived some extra years
because you approached ALS with such an open mind and loving heart.

I also met your wonderful husband in China, Djordje. As far
as I can remember, you both worked in Hollywood, you were a film editor and
loved literature and good stories. The two of you sure seemed to form a
symbiosis on many levels. Being in China with my sister, I felt sorry for not
having met your children. Our dinners together felt like the intimate dinners
of families who share a lifetime together. In a way, we did, we even shared two
of them and more generations beyond them.

A few months after my father died, I was tired of being me,
not even able to enter the mourning zone that seemed to offer only excruciating
pain. That reluctance coincided with the challenge I got to start a virtual alter
ego for an art contest. Before I won that strange contest and subsequently lost
almost all vision, was diagnosed with a burn-out and started confronting the
black beast of mourning that had been lurking at me for months, I made you a
direct witness of some of the adventures my alter ego Andreas had: seducing
women on dating sites, adding hundreds of unknown Facebookfriends, but also
making fun of the sexist literary world in subtle, wicked ways. You were
excited and kept on sending me messages: ‘Marie, this is fabulous, great,
exciting, necessary, hilarious, awesome, fantastic.’

In this spring of 2013, our virtual contact was the most intense.
But even then, conversations were short, I didn’t ask you about your physical state
or how you managed to type, but I didn’t expect in-depth conversations either.
They weren’t necessary. From the moment I met you, I felt your depth and you
felt me. I will remember you as a creative, funny and intelligent woman, as a
soul who was spiritual and open-minded but equally down-to-earth and in a
constant quest to broaden and deepen knowledge.

The last time we spoke is already a year ago. I had just
taken my second reiki course and was totally amazed by the results. Open to everything,
you immediately said ‘sure’ when I offered you to give reiki from a distance. A
few minutes later I asked you if your neck tilted to the right. You told me
this was indeed the case and that your paralysed neck was giving you lots of
pain that week. Still, you didn’t complain, you just thanked me. Our last words
were symbols of love.

You are an example, taliswoman. You really are. ‘You brought
such a joyful energy to the time you were in Zhongfang, and I’m sure, all the
times you were with him. I saw how he enjoyed your stories and your passionate
energy. You should feel good that you gave him that joy.’ This is what you
wrote to me after my father died. Let’s replace the ‘you’ by ‘we’. Because all
the things you thanked me for, are what I feel grateful about after knowing
you. You’re setting the example in a humbling, but empowering manner.

I hope your family knows they are in my thoughts and heart.
Both Djordje and your children are always welcome to visit my first or second
home, Belgium or Amsterdam. And you, Betsy, feel welcome to visit me in my
dreams. Don’t be scared when you feel stubbles when giving me nocturnal kisses.
For you never know who you’re visiting. There’s just one soul, but it has many faces and one belongs to Andreas. He’s telling me you’re one of
the most fabulous, great, exciting, necessary, hilarious, awesome, fantastic ladies
he has ever met. We agree.